


Please Try to Never Grow Up

by notquitepunkrock



Series: wlw demigod au [2]
Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians - Rick Riordan, The Heroes of Olympus - Rick Riordan
Genre: Alternate Universe - All Female, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Asexual Character, Canonical Character Death, Everyone Is Gay, F/F, Fluff, I'm the angst queen but I also am not evil so it's happy too I p r o m i s e, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Sexual Assault, Lesbian Character, Multi, Panic Attacks, Referenced PTSD, Self-Hatred, So much angst, Stream of Consciousness, ace!Leo, like literally a l l female, only the adults stayed the same tbh
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-08-27
Updated: 2017-11-18
Packaged: 2018-08-11 06:33:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 7
Words: 10,652
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7880254
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/notquitepunkrock/pseuds/notquitepunkrock
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Demigods grow up too young, too fast, too soon. It's just the way of things. The way it's always been.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Nicoletta

**Author's Note:**

> Fic title is from Never Grow Up by Taylor Swift (which makes me cry so much tbh)
> 
> AHH This is an adventure we shall see how it goes.

Nicoletta is ten when she learns to hate herself.

She’s ten when she learn that there’s something wrong with her, that her very existence is a threat, and that she’ll never be safe, that she will never, ever, deserve love. She’s ten when she’s staring at Perseia-fucking-Jackson and hoping against hope that she’s lying, that she’s joking, and that her older sister will appear from behind the columns in the dining pavilion and they’ll laugh and hug and cry together. She’s ten when she learns that there’s nothing else for her to lose. 

Nicoletta is eleven when she learns to summon the dead. 

She’s eleven when her sister begs her to forget, to move on, and she doesn’t know how. She’s eleven when the one person who loved her unconditionally is really, truly gone and all that is left is a ghost who whispers awful things over her shoulder and convinces her to hurt a lot of people. She’s eleven and she’s cowering in dark caves alone, damp and cold and dirty, and praying to all the gods she can think of - and she knows a lot, thanks to that stupid Mythomagic game - that someone will come save to her. No one comes, and that’s when she loses faith in the gods forever.

Nicoletta is twelve when she’s found again. 

She’s twelve, and Percy is begging, begging for help, and it’s almost funny to see someone who is four years her senior begging her for anything. She’s twelve when she realizes that maybe she’s being stupid, that maybe people do care, that maybe letting the world burn and not getting involved isn’t the smartest decision she’s ever made. She’s twelve when she shoves Percy into the river and tries not to think about her screams as she waits for her to resurface. She’s twelve when she falls to her knees in the throneroom, weeping into her hands, and says softly, “Father, please. For Bianca.” His stern facade breaks for a moment as he nods. (For Bianca, though. Not for her. Never for her.) She’s twelve when, instead of being hailed as a hero, she’s met with derision and hate, and she can’t believe that she’s forgotten for a moment that she’s unwanted.

Nicoletta is thirteen when she loses the last shred of hope she had left.

She’s thirteen, and her sister has walked through the Lethe and was reborn, and now she’s really alone. She’s rushing through Asphodel, thinking that maybe,  _ maybe _ , she can get there in time to stop her, to convince her to come back. She reaches the edge and finds that she’s too late, watching her sister smile sadly at her from the river’s bank before a look of dumb confusion replaces her sweet face. She’s thirteen when she contemplates throwing herself in after her, because if she can’t live a life with Bianca in it, she doesn’t want to remember one. Later, when she’s stumbling back across the fields, she finds a different sister, and realizes that, even if she lost one, she has gained another.

Nicoletta is fourteen when things start getting better.

She’s fourteen, and Willa is there to hold her hand and smile at her and make it okay. The world is still cloudy, and awful, and gray, but at least she’s not alone. She’s fourteen, and she still wants to dissolve into nothing sometimes, to melt into shadows or disappear amongst the ghosts in the Underworld, but it’s not nearly as intrusive or as often. She’s getting better slowly, day by day. She’s fourteen, and for the first time in her life, she has friends - she has Willa, and Reyna, and Frankie, and Percy, and Jason, and Lea, and Annabeth, and of course, she has Hazel. She’s fourteen, and she maybe doesn’t hate herself quite as much as she used to. 


	2. Percy

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lol I have far too much angst on my account oh well
> 
> Trigger Warnings for child abuse because Gabe is an asshole, and like, referenced PTSD.

Percy is eight when she first learns she is worthless.

She’s eight the first time Gabe raises a hand to her, the first time a red mark graces her cheek, and her mother cries for hours. Percy thought she’d have cried too, but she doesn’t. She’s only eight, but she just stood there and took it, hardly even flinching as the word “worthless” is spilled from Gabe’s mouth over and over. When he's done, she bends down to clean up the chips she dropped. She’s eight when she listens to her mother beg for Gabe to never do that again, as Sally Jackson promises that any time Percy does wrong, he can punish  _ her  _ instead. She’s eight when she decides to never mess up ever again.

Percy is nine when she fights back.

She’s nine, and he’s railing on her mother, beating her black and blue - and not a pretty blue, not the blue that she’s learned to love - and she can’t stand idly by anymore. She’s nine when she pushes her way in between them, when she digs her trimmed, bloody, bitten nails into Gabe’s arms. When that doesn’t work she screams like hell, screams the way only a terrified nine-year-old can, until Gabe covers her mouth with his big, smelly hands. She’s quick to bite down, leaving him spitting curses. She’s nine the first time she misses school because otherwise someone will figure out something is wrong, and Gabe can’t have that.

Percy is ten when she gives up.

She’s ten and it’s been a whole year, and she’s tired of fighting back. Her arms ache from pushing against someone three times her size, and nothing she does is working. She’s ten and she lets herself fall quietly into the background and obey, obey, obey, because of her mother. Because her mother insists that they need to be with Gabe, that they can’t leave him for reasons that Percy won’t understand until she’s older. She’s ten, and when her History teacher asks her what’s wrong, she snaps and she yells, and pretty soon she’s being kicked out  _ again _ . And this time, it really was her fault. 

Percy is twelve when everything is flipped upside down.

She’s twelve and she’s lost her mom and her best friend is a fucking  _ goat _ and she’s just very confused right now. She’s twelve when she’s thrown into this world of monsters and gods and she has to go on a quest to save the entire planet - a planet she’s not entirely sure she wants to save in the first place. Annabeth is counting on her, everyone’s counting on her, and she just wants everything to go back to when she was seven, before everything went bad and just  _ stop. _ And then she sees Gabe on the news, saying awful things, and a fire of anger and hatred fills her stomach and her lungs and she decides to stop this (stupid, childish) war, just so she can descend upon Gabe with a fury she’s never felt before and run him through with a sword. She’s twelve, and for the first time she’s contemplating murder. She can’t say she’s surprised.

Percy is thirteen when she almost loses her best friend.

She’s thirteen and her head hurts and her eyes hurt and Grover is begging for help, and she just wants to be there for them. She’s not even really mad when Clarisse is chosen to go without her, not for the reasons everyone thinks she’s mad. She’s angry as hell, because that’s her  _ best friend,  _ because Grover needs her help, and no one is letting her help them. So when Annabeth suggests they go themselves, she’s already packed, and dragging her new (cyclops, really, Dad?) sister along with her, because she just needs to get there/ She needs to save her. She’s only thirteen, she can’t lose another friend. Not like this. (She’s pushing aside thoughts of Lucy’s betrayal every chance she gets because it hurts like hell to think about.) 

Percy is fourteen when the guilt sets in.

She’s fourteen, and seeing Bianca die made everything slow down and speed up all at once. She’s only fourteen, but she’s suddenly keenly aware of the way everyone is counting on her, more so than ever, because she  _ promised  _ Nicoletta that her sister would come back. She promised, and she’s failed, and if she had never been born or if she had died already, this wouldn’t have happened. It’s her fault, and she hates it. She’s only fourteen and she’s not ready to be the child of a prophecy that could lead to the total destruction of the world. She’s got the weight of the world on her shoulders (literally) and she doesn’t want it there. She wants it to go away. As she’s watching Zoë dies, stars lighting up her eyes, Percy's wishing she could do anything to make this stop. Even if it means she has to die.

Percy is fifteen when she nearly falls apart. 

She’s fifteen, and she can’t take this insistence that she is the golden girl, the one they’re all waiting for. She’s only fifteen, and she’s supposed to stop this army, supposed to stop a fucking _titan_ in just a year, and she’s got to basically do it by herself. She’s spent years battling monsters, but when she’s faced with the death and the destruction of her entire camp, with the very real possibility that Annabeth or Grover could die, with the blood of dozens of her fellow campers staining her hands, she wants to crumple to the floor and scream. Annabeth finds her on the floor of her cabin one day, curled into a ball and trying to block out their voices, pressing her hands to her eyes to stop seeing the faces of Lucy and Lee and Charlie and Bianca and so many others. They sit on the floor for a long time, and pretend it didn’t happen afterwards, but they both know that things aren’t okay. She’s fifteen, and she just wants to be normal.

Percy is sixteen when she saves the world.

She’s sixteen, and she’s not being a melodramatic teenager. She’s looking around at the wreckage in the streets, on Olympus, at camp, staring at the dozens of bodies of her friends and foes alike, and can’t help but feel a little upset. Even if she saved the world, she’s the reason so many of these people are dead. Silena’s face stares up at her from the pavement, pale as porcelain and peaceful for the first time since Charlie died. Percy wants to bring her back, to tell her it’s okay, that it’s not her fault, that she was dragged into this and didn’t have a choice. She wants to make it all better, because she can see the way Clarisse is wrecked inside to have lost both of her girlfriends so close together. She’s sixteen, and she wraps her arms around Annabeth and kisses her in the lake, and prays to all the gods that things will just stay peaceful for once.

Percy is seventeen, and everything’s okay again.

She’s seventeen and she’s been fighting non-stop for nine years. (She counts those years with Gabe; of course she does.) It’s a relief to be able to breathe, to be able to see a movie with Annabeth or IM with Grover without looking over her shoulder every two seconds. Still, she does, because she’s seventeen and seen more horrors than any seventeen-year-old should ever have to see in their lives. She’s sometimes too scared to go to sleep, sometimes on edge with Riptide clutched in her fist (just in case), sometimes wants to run away where she can’t ever cause her mother and her new sister and her step-father to get hurt because of her. But she knows it’s not her fault now - if anything, it’s her father’s fault for not keeping it in his damn pants - and she’s getting better. She’s not worthless anymore. 


	3. Lea

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ayeee trigger warnings for: lowkey homophobia, highkey self-hatred, and just Lea being sad

Lea is five  the first time she feels like a monster.

She’s five, and she’s thinking that maybe she’ll show this picture to  Mamá when she gets home, and maybe they’ll be able to build a model of it. She’s been obsessed with the idea of this big boat forever - a trireme, Mamá called it - but this is the first time she’s ever drawn  _ her  _ ship, the one she wants to build. This is the first time she’s laid out her plans on paper, her chubby, tanned hands carefully drawing the oars and the dragon on the masthead with her crayons. When it was blown away, she was upset, so upset that she couldn’t think straight. She's only five, and she still doesn’t know how she managed to singe her hands into the tabletop, but Mamá always carefully looks past them after Lea shows her what she did with Tia Callida. (To her credit, the old woman denies knowing a thing.) That’s how she knows she did something wrong, with the fire. She’s five when she realizes that she’s not normal.

Lea is six when she demands to know about her father.

She’s six, and she’s come home from school crying, admittedly not for the first time. But this time, it’s because the other kids were teasing her because she’s never met him. She’s throws a fit on the front porch that day, her first in a long time, and Tia Callida tiredly brings her to her mother’s shop. Esperanza Valdez is covered in sweat and grease, but she wipes off her hands and kneels at Lea’s side, speaking quietly to her and waving away an annoyed looking man who needs an oil change when he tries to interrupt. Lea’s only six, so she’s choking back sobs as she says, “my daddy doesn’t love me,” and Mamá’s face hardens at the words. Her voice is fierce, thick with a mix of Spanish and hard Texan accent, and she’s blinking back tears as well when she shakes her head, swearing up, down, and sideways that Lea is wrong. (Mamá doesn’t cry, ever, so Lea is inclined to believe her.) She’s six, and she would believe her mother no matter what.

Lea is seven when she nearly burns the house down.

She’s seven, and it’s mother’s day, and she just wanted to make Mamá breakfast for once, but, well, she isn’t allowed to use the stove. So she did what any fire-controlling seven-year-old would do in this situation - she tries to use her hands. It goes well at first, but then she trips and the flames are licking the table and the cabinets and she screams because she doesn’t know what to do. She’s surrounded by fire, and it’s  _ supposed  _ to hurt, is the thing, and she’s scared because she knows Mamá is sleeping and she messed up. After the fact, when she and Mamá are standing outside of the house wrapped in shock blankets and watching firefighters spray the kitchen with water, she explains what happened to her, quietly. Her face is soaked with tears, but Mamá laughs and kisses her on the head, and tells her it’s okay. “Someone could get hurt like that,  _ mija _ ,” she chides, pulling her close. “You’ve got to be more careful.” Once Lea's apologized about fifty time, she finally starts to feel better, or at least not as bad. Her mother thanks her for the thought, and suggests a card or a toy next year. Lea’s seven so she nods seriously and pinky swears. She can’t wait for next Mother’s Day.

Lea is eight when Mother’s Day doesn’t come. 

She’s eight when  _ she  _ shows up at the shop, sleepy and threatening. When her mother gets separated from her, Lea’s desperate. She can’t think of anything to do, so she uses fire, and it engulfs the shop. She flashes back to less than a year ago, to the kitchen fire that was blamed on her being careless with a dishrag, and breaks down. She’s begging, pleading, for her mother to get out alive. It didn’t work. She’s only eight when her mother dies, when Tia Rosa is cursing her name and spitting at her, gripping her by the upper arm and calling her a  _ diablo _ . “Lea,” she spits the name like it’s poison that burns her mouth, “is no relative of mine. She killed  _ mi hermana _ . She killed Esperanza!” Lea can’t deny it, she can’t pretend that it wasn’t her, so she’s taken from her family and left to The System. (It’s so scary, she thinks it deserves capital letters.) She makes a vow to stop using the thing that destroyed her life. She’s eight, and she knows now that she’s unwanted. 

Lea is nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, and she is a failure.

She’s practically grown up in the system, grown up with jumping from family to family. None of them want her around, none of them care about her. They all want a paycheck, not to make sure the tiny, scrawny, skinny orphan girl is okay. The first year was the hardest, but after running away the first time, it becomes a game, a challenge. (A pattern.) Get placed in a home, run away, get caught, repeat. By the time she is fifteen, she can tell they’re getting tired of her. On the off chance she sticks around for a while, she gets into so much trouble that she’s just sent away. A few of the homes are full of assholes, who won’t hesitate to “punish” her if they think they can get away with it. (She makes the mistake of explaining that she’s homoromantic asexual to one of the other girls at a home, and the parent tries to “beat the gay out.” She didn’t feel bad about running away at all.) Lea knows she’s unwanted, knows that no one cares, so she plasters on a smile and compensates with humor. Otherwise, she’s just another delinquent kid in the system, another deadbeat Hispanic girl who’s never going to accomplish anything. By the sixth time she runs away, she’s resigned herself to her fate. She’s fifteen, and she might as well just give up already.

Lea is sixteen when she realizes she is wanted. 

She’s sixteen and she has friends for the first time. She loves Piper to death, would jump in front of a blade for her - and has, several times. But Jason… Her world screeched to a halt when she met Jason, really met her, not the way Hera (curse her) planted into their brains. She’s so kind, so funny, so protective, and something about her sends Lea into a tailspin. But she’s a good friend, so she ignores it, ignores the way that her hands shake anytime Jason is in trouble, and focuses all her energy on saving the world. She nearly cries when she finally uses fire again, when she lets her hand light up and, for once, she isn’t scared of it. It’s like a breath of fresh air, but all too soon, things come back and they get worse. She knows that she has to die almost before she makes the plan, praying and hoping it will work out like she needs it to, that Festus will save her and they’ll go flying off to Ogygia and save Calypso. If things go wrong, she reminds herself, it’s okay. It’s for the good of everyone else. She’s not important enough to be missed. (She’s wrong, so wrong. She was only gone a week, but the greeting she received was enough to tell her that she’s loved.) She is sixteen, and she’s engulfed in a real, loving hug for the first time in eight years, and it nearly kills her in the best way.

Lea is seventeen when she finally forgives herself.

She’s seventeen, and sometimes the nearly decade-old guilt eats away at her until Jason finds her in the Bunker, trying to sit on her hands and smoking at the ears, tears slowly leaking out of her closed eyes. Sometimes, the feeling of flames, cooler than they should be, licking at her palms and arms and hair is too much and she covers her ears to block out the screams that she remembers but knows aren’t real, and Piper has to remind her that it’s a memory - and a messed up one, at that. Sometimes, she can’t calm down, and then Reyna is there, whispering to her in Spanish, hugging her close because “it’s not your fault, Lea, you didn’t kill her, it was an accident.” Sometimes she just wants to cut her hands off, let the fire in her lungs extinguish so that she can breathe without burning herself inside, and her siblings have to trail after her in concern. But slowly, painfully slowly, between Hazel and Frankie’s hovering, and Nicoletta’s silent support, and Willa’s ongoing patience, and Coach’s offers of training and Percy’s jokes under her breath, and Annabeth’s careful reminders that it’s  _ okay _ , she learns how to breath again. Clarisse is, surprisingly, the most helpful, muttering fondly about how Hephaestus kids are too hard on themselves. Lea is sixteen when she realizes that she isn’t a monster.


	4. Jason

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Don't really think there are any warnings for this chapter in particular, besides the usual angst and mentions of Beryl Grace's A+++ parenting job. So enjoy this mess.

Jason didn’t remember the first time she felt unloved.

She was too little to remember, but she knew the feeling had existed forever. Probably since shortly after she was born, after her dad left her and her mother and Thalia behind for good. Probably when her mother started drinking behind closed doors and left baby Jason to cry in her crib for hours until Thalia - only seven at the time, and clueless about babies - crept into the room and held her. Her sister had taught herself to make a bottle, to change a diaper, to entertain little ones for hours, because her mother just didn’t bother. Beryl Grace was not cut out for motherhood, to the point that her seven-year-old raised her baby. Jason was too little to remember it, but she can still recall the distinct feeling of hopelessness the first time her mother walked right by her and didn’t even look.

Jason is two when she loses everything.

She is two, and she doesn’t have much besides a loving older sister and a stupid boy’s name, but she’s overly attached to them. (Or at least to Thalia; she could have changed her name and not cared a bit.) She’s lost in the woods, left crying for her sister, and found by a wolf. Lupa is like her mother, but she was harsh and cruel, and it’s clear from the very first day that she couldn’t care less whether the little girl lives or dies. Jason longs to play with her princess dolls and dance to rock music with and play hide and seek with Thalia, but she learns quick not to express that longing. She’s two when she learns how to be a warrior. 

Jason is five when she’s given a new home.

She is five when Lupa drops her into Camp Jupiter, leaving her in the woods with her too-small clothing and her messy blonde hair. The first thing Eloise and Yale, the praetors at the time, want to do is chop her hair short, shorter than Thalia’s has ever been. But then Jason remembers, somewhere in the back of her mind, her sister saying, “you have such pretty hair, Jase, we should let it grow.” She throws a fit, kicking and screaming, and Eloise steps away in confusion, but Yale kneels at her side and asked  _ why _ she doesn’t want it cut. Jason doesn’t know anymore, can’t remember, but she knows it’s important to her, that it means everything to keep it long, and Yale agrees, so long as she keeps it out of her way. A daughter of Venus, Jason can’t remember her name, teaches her how to tie it up into a tight ponytail, how to braid it, how to use it to choke someone, and how to get away if someone grabs it without cutting it all off. For the first time in three years, in maybe ever, Jason feels at home. She is five and she has a family, as large and unforgiving as it may be.

When Jason is ten, she grows obsessed with honor.

She’s just ten when she’s inducted into the Fifth Cohort. Yale has taken care of her for the past five years, years in which it was decided she was too small to be an official member of the legion, years when she had lines of service branded into her skin and had learned to hold a sword, but hadn’t gotten anything in return. Still, the camp sees her as a leader, all because her father is Jupiter, so she squares her shoulders and joins the ranks of the Fifth Cohort, glaring at everyone who sneers with a tightly set jaw. She is determined to return the cohort to glory, to prove that they are just as important as the others, just as strong and as brave. She’s ten, but she’s determined to make the older girl in the back of her head, the one who she can barely remember, proud. 

Jason is eleven when she loses the last connection to her real family.

She is eleven when she had to chop off her hair. Her hair’s all she has left, the only real memory that she has of her sister. (What was her name, did she even exist, Jason can’t remember anymore.) It starts as a necessity - the Fifth Cohort’s barracks are infested with lice. She has to cut it all short and shower three times a day with special shampoo and let someone comb her hair through, and then she has to cover her newly cropped hair with mayonnaise, which is gross and stinks like hell. She hasn’t been too upset over any part of the process, not even complaining about the way her scalp itches, until they sit her down and hold up the scissors. Jason screams and sobs and kicks and begs them to let her keep it long, just like she had when she was five (the last time she had cried, she thinks), but no one listens. When it’s in piles at her feet, she stares forlornly and and wonders why she feels so empty inside. Something’s missing, something that has to do with her hair. She’s eleven when she decided to never cut her hair again, no matter what.

Jason is twelve when she lets a little light into her life.

She’s twelve, and has spent the last two (seven, really) years training hard and learning the ins and outs of life in the legion. She has pretty much forgotten anything before Lupa, before the woods and the blood and the learning not to cry and not to flinch when she kills. Sometimes, there’s a girl’s voice in the back of her head, telling her to work hard and that she’s proud, but Jason’s pretty sure she’s just imagining things. No one has any idea of who she was before. All she remembers is vague shapes and colors and crying a lot, and her name - Jason Grace isn’t a normal name for a girl, so it’s hard to forget. Reyna is different, though. She had shown up at Camp Jupiter, bedraggled and dirt-streaked, but she was already hard and battleworn. She’s determined. She’d been a tough nut to crack, but Jason got through, little by little. And Reyna is fantastic, hilarious and witty. There’s absolutely no better prank partner, not for Jason. And the best part is, Reyna couldn’t care less whether Jason is the daughter of Jupiter or not. She’s twelve, and she just made her first real friend.

Jason is sixteen, and she’s broken.

She’s sixteen when left standing in what’s left of Kronos’ palace, staring at the wreckage and the bodies and the blood. There’s a thin coating of monster dust over everything, a thicker coat of blood and golden ichor. She’s covered in gashes and sweat and mud. Her face is streaked with dirt and blood, and her (long, long, long) hair is crusted over in red. Reyna’s at her side, sagging into her side, really, her dark eyes hard and angry. She hasn’t let her guard down, even though it’s over and they’ve won. Jason wishes she would. She’s wound too tightly, and she doesn’t even have an analogy for it, but she wants to make it stop, but she can’t. Because she’s a leader,  _ the leader _ , and everyone is looking at her for guidance and help and she doesn’t know what to do know. Reyna takes over, and Jason just smiles and nods and stops talking. She doesn’t know when she’ll talk again, doesn’t think she ever will. Reyna turns to her after everyone disperses, and suddenly she’s kissing her, and Jason’s shaking her head and apologizing and Reyna looks crushed for a moment. And then she seems to realize something, and she’s laughing because “that felt weird, didn’t it?” and Jason doesn’t say a word, but she smiles and Reyna seems to understand. She’s sixteen, and she’s on top of the world, but she can’t bring herself to be happy about it.

Jason is seventeen and she hates everything.

She’s seventeen, and her fucking birthday was the apocalypse, so that’s fan-fucking-tastic. And they won, but Lea’s gone and Jason is absolutely wrecked. Her best friend in the entire world is dead and gone and she’s breaking apart, because she just got Lea, and Lea is the best, better than even Reyna, and only slightly not as good as Piper. She can’t stand it, and wants to fling her glasses into the sea, because she got them from Asclepius, and Asclepius is the one who made Lea basically kill herself because she thought it’d be okay. When Lea comes back she’s torn between punching her and hugging her, so she does both and curses her name until she’s apologizing into Jason’s shoulder. She hates everything because things are supposed to be okay now, especially once Lea’s back, and they aren’t, and she doesn’t think it’s fair. She hates everything because she can hear Percy screaming, she knows about Annabeth and Nico’s nightmares, she can see the way Reyna seems to space out from time to time,  and she holds Piper in her arms when she can’t stop crying. She hates everything, because she’s still not okay. She’s seventeen, and she doesn’t even know what okay means.

She’s eighteen, and she’s getting better.

She’s really just turning eighteen, and she’s having a party for the first time in her life. It’s the best thing that could have ever happened for her, even though the Jackson’s apartment is a little too small for everyone. Jason has one arm around Piper’s waist, and one arm slung over Lea’s shoulders, and she’s laughing. Thalia did her hair for the occasion, and Percy is trying to force everyone to look at her little sister because “she’s fu- freaking adorable, Reyna, look at her little face.” Even Nicoletta is smiling, and everything feels good and right in the world. Maybe everything isn’t okay, maybe they’re all still a little broken, but whoever said broken is bad? (Okay, Lea has, but that’s not the point - she’s a daughter of Hephaestus, of course she thinks broken is a bad thing. But not in people. Never in people.) She’s eighteen, and it hits her like a brick in the face - she would know - that she’s loved more than anyone else in the world.


	5. Silena

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: I forgot that Silena's dad made chocolates... so pretend he's a male model who also owns a chocolate company?
> 
> Warnings for: idk, canonical character death? There's a happy ending though so it's all good

Silena is six when she finds out she’s a freak.

She is six when a boy shoves her down and rips her pretty dress and mumbles the word that would soon be the bane of her existence. The tears build behind her eyes, and she can’t stop them before they begin streaming down her face. She balls up her fists in anger, but the anger melts away when she looks down at her long hair. She can’t tell what color it is - is it brown, or blonde, or black maybe? She knew that none of the other girls have hair as weird as hers. None of the other girls have hair that can both shine like gold and be as dark as night. Silena is weird. She is a freak. She hates it. She asks Daddy when she gets home, dried tears still staining her cheeks as she whispers the question. He frantically shakes his head, promising she is beautiful, perfect, special. Silena doesn’t believe him. She is six and she already hates herself. 

Silena is seven when she is forgotten.

She is seven when her father gets a new girlfriend, a serious girlfriend that he has around all the time, unlike all the models that are constantly smiling at her with too-white teeth and hugging her with two-thin arms. She’s pretty and nice, but all of a sudden Daddy is taking her on dates and to the premieres and awards shows that he used to take Silena to. It hurts, it hurts a lot, because now they don’t do anything together. She’ll be standing right there in front of him, sitting next to him on the couch, and he’ll practically look through her. He’s always busy, always setting up shoots and shows and he’s never  _ paying attention,  _ not unless she does that weird thing with her voice that gets him to listen to her _. _ Silena knows that she’s lucky, that there are lots of kids who don’t have parents or food or water. She paid attention at all of those charity things he took her too. But she’s only seven, and all she wants is her dad.

Silena is eight when she finds a home.

She’s eight when Dad drops the bomb that she’s going to camp for the summer, that he’s ditching her while he flies halfway around the world to do some show or something with his girlfriend. Silena is sure it’s going to be some all-girls camp for rich kids, the kind where she’s supposed to fit in but she never  _ really  _ does, so she’s surprised when she meets the counselor for Cabin Eleven, a funny boy whose name she can never remember. She’s even more surprised when he takes her to the Big House, and it’s falling apart a little, blue paint peeling off of the sides and white trim old and dirty. When she first steps through the door, she feels at ease. Her arms slowly relax around her Louis Vuitton duffle bag. A week into camp, she’s blessed by Aphrodite, and her new cabinmates - her  _ siblings _ \- welcome her with open arms. Maybe she’s not cut out for all the war games and the fighting, but she feels accepted. She’s a little different, but she’s not so odd here. The day camp ends, she hides her face so no one knows she’s crying. She’s eight, and she’s found the only place that feels like home.

Silena is nine when she remembers.

She’s nine when she accidentally does that  _ voice thing _ again, the one she swore she’d never do. It was an accident, but it was the final straw for her father. After all, watching his daughter accidentally make his girlfriend - fiancee, she reminds herself bitterly - try to throw herself out of the window of their apartment can mess you up. She’d told Silena to close the window, that she was going to end up jumping out if she kept dancing too close, and Silena had told her “yeah, well maybe you should try.” It was an accident - her resentment got the best of her. It’s enough to get her pulled out of school and sent back to camp. Everything is better there, though, so she can’t complain. At least, until one of the older boys, one who glares at the Aphrodite cabin with hatred in his eyes (Silena later finds out that one of her sisters broke his heart - stupid ritual) catches her in Capture the Flag. He holds her against a tree with his knife at her throat, calling her a freak for having “charmspeak”, a freak for her hair and her eyes, a freak for what she did to her soon-to-be stepmother. Silena finally gets him to let go, but he grabs a fistful of her long hair and slices it off before he does, spitting at her and throwing the handful of her locks in her face. She’s nine when she remembers that she will never be normal.

Silena is ten when she gets confused.

She’s ten when the new girl shows up on the back of a short, angry satyr named Hedge. The girl was hurt, but tough, gritting her teeth and walking on her broken ankle, despite the healers’ warning her not to. Something about her strikes a chord with Silena, and she can’t help but like her, even when the girl glares at her and spits at her to go away. Silena keeps trying, though, and soon enough she and Clarisse are closer than she’s ever been with anyone. Clarisse is harsher than she is, cruel and defensive. She protects Silena in a way that no one else ever has. Silena is softer, kind and caring. They balance each other out perfectly, even though everyone else thinks their friendship is weird, crazy even. So when she realizes the way that her stomach flips every time Clarisse looks at her sounds like what her sisters and brothers are always calling love, she’s confused. She’s a girl, and Clarisse isn’t a boy, so why,  _ why _ does she feel like this? Her sister, Rosa, tells her it’s normal, shows her things about girls liking girls and even tells her that she’s one of those people. Silena doesn’t understand - she thought gay was a bad thing. She heard people saying it as an insult. She doesn’t want to be gay. She’s ten, and she’s terrified of herself.

Silena is thirteen when she makes a mistake.

She is thirteen, and being taught by her older brother how to be a counselor, and she’s proud of herself for once. Maybe everyone else will stop thinking she’s a freak, now, or at least be too intimidated by her authority to mention it in front of her. And then Lucy pulls her aside and she has to stop herself from freaking out because it’s  _ Lucy Castellan, _ and she’s  _ really  _ cute, and she needs to stop thinking about this right now. Lucy tells her about her plans, says she’ll need someone inside the camp and how Silena’s  _ special _ , and she’s the only one who can do it. Something sounds wrong to her, because the Titans are bad, but Lucy just shakes her head, and promises that if Silena helps, she can save a lot of lives. Silena thinks of Clarisse and that new girl, Charlie don’t-call-me-Charlotte Beckendorf, and she agrees because they’re always protecting her and it’s her turn to protect  _ them _ . She thinks of Annabeth Chase, who just went on a quest with Percy Jackson, and she thinks of her newest sister, Drew, and she thinks of all the kids that aren’t claimed yet, and she agrees because if she can do something to save them, she ought to do it, right? She’s thirteen, and she doesn’t realize that she just ruined everything.

Silena is sixteen when she tries to back out.

She’s sixteen, and her camp is in ruins and it’s  _ her  _ fault. It’s her fault, because she told Lucy, she told her how to get into camp and what the battle plans were. She’s the reason that so many people died. This is the exact opposite of what Lucy promised, and when she next sees her, she tells her so. Lucy looks at her for a long moment, eyes flickering between gold and blue, and shakes her head. “You can’t stop, Silena,” she says, voice hard. “You can’t stop or he’ll make me kill you.” Silena knows who she means but she insists. She’d rather die than be the reason the people she loves get hurt. She tells the older girl this, gritting her teeth to keep herself from crying, and awaits the familiar bite of a blade, but it doesn’t come. Lucy is staring at her with tears in her eyes and shaking hands and then she starts bargaining, almost sounding like she’s begging. She swears not to hurt Charlie and Clarisse, promises that she’ll make sure they aren’t hurt and that they’ll be okay if Silena just keeps going. Silena hates herself, hates herself because that’s an offer that she can’t refuse. She’d do anything to keep them safe. She’s sixteen when she seals her fate.

Silena is seventeen, and she couldn’t be happier.

She’s seventeen when Charlie asks her  _ and _ Clarisse to a camp-wide picnic on the beach. She spends the night sandwiched between the two of them on her blanket, holding both of their hands tightly and praying it never ends. She’s seventeen and she’s naive. 

Silena is seventeen when it ends.

She’s seventeen, it’s only been a matter of  _ months,  _ and it’s not fucking fair, she doesn’t think, that Charlie’s been taken away. Her heart freezes in its steady rhythm when Percy gently relays the new that her girlfriend is dead - Lucy promised, and she broke her promise, which means that Clarisse is at risk too and that can’t happen. She can’t lose them both. She sticks close to her side after that, not wanting to risk letting her out of her sight, but then the battle comes, and she has to leave. She has to leave because she’s got a duty to Lucy and to Kronos, and she hates it. She tries so hard to get Clarisse to come, to give up this stupid fight, but she refuses. Once Silena realizes the children of Ares have to be there to kill the drakon, she comes up with a plan, stupid and dangerous, but a good one. As she dons Clarisse’s armor, she remembers the story of Achilles and Patroclus, sends a prayer to her mother, and charges into battle. As she’s dying, she tells Percy, because the girl deserves to know. She was a spy, who doesn’t deserve goodness, doesn’t deserve the death of a hero. She’s hopeful, though, because maybe she’ll see Charlie again. She’s seventeen, and she’s a hero, no matter what she thinks. 

Silena is in Elysium, and things are okay, for real.

She’s in Elysium and she runs into Charlie’s arms and breaks down into tears. She falls to the floor, sobbing, because she failed her, and she left Clarisse alone, and she killed everyone. Silena can’t stop crying, can’t stop apologizing. She doesn’t deserve happiness, doesn’t deserve paradise, this is her fault. Charlie dying is her fault. Charlie listens and hugs her and the shuts her up with a kiss because “it’s not your fault, baby, Lucy was using you. Kronos was using you.” She shakes her head, memories of “freak, freak, freak, freak,” running through her mind, and Charlie reminds her that she’s not a freak. She’s special, she’s unique, she’s strong and brave and kind and loyal. She did what she thought she had to do. They hear news of the living world occasionally, and they’re happy for Clarisse once she starts dating Chris, proud of Lea and Piper. Things are better than they’ve ever been, but sometimes they’re not. It takes a while for Silena to be really happy there, but Charlie helps, and when they finally sit back to wait for Clarisse together, they wait for a long time. She’s in Elysium, and she’s definitely not the freakiest one there.


	6. Annabeth

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's been like eighteen years but I'm back and angstier than ever.
> 
> TW for self-deprecation

Annabeth is five when her life falls apart. 

She’s five when her father remarries, when he ruins the perfect life they had of just the two of them, eating crappy TV dinners because he doesn’t know how to cook and working on his reenactment table and going to lectures when the babysitter cancels (which is always.) Now, suddenly, there’s another schedule to work around and she  _ hates _ it, hates the way that he stepmother freezes every time Annabeth asks for anything, the smile that falls off her face when Annabeth starts crying, the icy glare she sends her when Annabeth sees something, she  _ swears _ it. And when the twins are born, it’s just a little worse, because suddenly there’s there’s two screaming, sobbing,  _ things _ , and she sees the way her father smiles at them. That’s when she realizes that he never smiled at her that way… he never wanted her and her mother in his life the way he wants her stepmother and the boys. She’s five and her heart hurts in a way that she’s not sure will ever heal.

She’s six, and then seven, when she realizes she’s not wanted.

She’s six and then seven when she is silenced because the twins are sleeping, when she’s ignored because the twins are learning to talk and it’s so much cuter than her and her theories and her architecture facts, when she’s ushered away because her stories might scare the twins. Her father slows taking her to work with him, then stops altogether, and she misses the way his students used to ruffle her hair and give her candies and let her look at their notes for their other classes. He’s too busy now, and it’s  _ not fair _ to take her and not the boys, even though Annabeth is older and she’s got her mother’s brains so it doesn’t matter. The last straw is when she gets off the bus, covered in scrapes because some kid thought it’d be funny to trip her at recess and make fun of her crush on Nicky Stevens, and a creepy  _ thing _ was watching her when she got off, to find the house empty because they took the twins to Disneyland. And isn’t that just a cold feeling in her heart, because she’s always wanted to go, and they  _ would have taken you but you had school _ , and it’s not  _ fair _ because they’re only two and infantile amnesia states that they won’t even remember anything before three anyway. She’s six and then seven when her heart breaks and she realizes that even her own family doesn’t love her.

She’s seven when she gets out.

She’s seven when she finally acts on the whispered secrets told to her cousin in the dim of the office, hands wrapped around a bag of runestones. She slips out the window after one too many times of being told she was lying about the spiders and having her tears and pleas for help ignored, leaving a promise on the wind that she’ll talk to Magnus as soon as she can, and slips away into the darkness. She is near dead by the time Lucy and Thalia find her, shivering and shaking in an alleyway with only a hammer to protect herself, head filled with thoughts of  _ everyone hates you, no one could ever love you, _ and with nightmares of monster after monster after monster attacking the tiny demigod with no home. Lucy gives her knife and a promise, and they become a family of three (and soon four, when Grove finds them) and maybe she’s a little infatuated with Lucy, but no one besides Thalia needs to know that. There’s nothing that could tear her apart… except then Thalia’s saving them and she’s dying and Annabeth’s  _ lost _ her, and nothing will ever be okay again she decides as Lucy holds her back from the other side of Camp Half-Blood’s borders with steely determination on her face as they watch their friend, their  _ family _ turn into a tree and wonder why it had to be her. Why Thalia? Annabeth is seven and she’s pretty sure she’s cursed to lose every family she ever has. 

Annabeth is twelve when she gets her chance to prove herself.

She’s twelve, and she  _ needs _ to go on a quest, to prove to herself that she’s good for  _ something _ . When the new girl shows up, this  _ Percy Jackson _ , with her stupidly pretty green eyes, and her long black hair and her tan skin, and she’s so  _ annoying _ and so  _ dumb _ and she doesn’t know how to shut up, and of course,  _ of course _ , she’s a daughter of Poseidon and gets probably the biggest quest in a decade within weeks of arriving, and Annabeth’ll be damned if she gets shown up by this Seaweed Brain. And yeah, okay, maybe Percy is cute and maybe it’s nice to spend time with Grove again, and maybe she’s not as dumb as first thought, but she doesn’t like her, shut  _ up  _ Grove. But then Percy almost dies, once, twice, too many times, and Annabeth is gripped by blind panic and that’s when she decides that if anyone is going to squirm their way into her heart, she doesn’t mind if it’s Percy. But then Lucy betrays them, it turns out  _ she’s _ the lightning thief, and Annabeth has never felt more betrayed, more lost, more abandoned than now. She’s twelve and she can’t help but wonder what she did wrong to make the gods decide she doesn't’ deserve to be happy.

Annabeth is thirteen when she loses herself.

She’s thirteen when she’s at Circe’s island and for the first time she’s  _ pretty _ . She’s gorgeous in the eyes of this sorceress, with the help of the two small girls waiting on her hand and foot, and she almost forgets why they’re here. But then she sees tiny guinea pig Percy, put in a cage because “heroes are pigs” and Annabeth is equal parts horrified and miffed. She saves Percy and tricks Circe, running off with the announcement that she’s a hero too, gods dammit. She almost loses herself again when she hears the sirens’ song, throwing herself overboard for the chance to have a life she wants, but Percy saves her, and the ice around her heart melts a little bit more at the fact that the girl would do anything for her. They have to fight tooth and nail to get to Grove and she breathes a sigh of relief that her friend is okay, and they get home and win the chariot race and if she kisses Percy on the cheek afterwards, well, that’s between them. Everything is fine, as fine as it could be with Lucy poisoning Thalia ( _ how dare she, after everything, this is the ultimate betrayal so why does Annabeth still get butterflies in her stomach when sees her face _ ) and Grove almost dying and her and Percy almost dying, when Thalia is  _ back _ , and Annabeth isn’t sure what this means. Annabeth is thirteen, and there’s almost a chance, somehow, that she could have her family back, at least in part.

Annabeth is fourteen when she endures the worst pain of her life.

She’s fourteen when a retrieval goes wrong, goes so, so, wrong, and she’s forced to hold the weight of the entire world on her tiny shoulders. And the worst part is, she could have been fine, except she trusted Lucy, even though she  _ knew _ not to, believed her when she said it would be okay if they just shared the weight. And now, now she’s biting her tongue to keep from falling as she does the job of a titan. She’s unable to sleep, for if she sleeps she’ll drop it and then she’ll die and Percy will die and everyone will die, and then Artemis is there, angrily taking the sky from her before she can protests and she has to watch as the goddess is stuck in her spot, while Lucy carries her way and whispers promises she can never keep. Annabeth feels useless when the others fight and she struggles silently, feels like she could have done so much more if she hadn’t been an  _ idiot _ , though her heart swells at the revelation that Percy came for her, at the fact that her father came flying in guns blazing for her. She’s fourteen when her last real hope at her family is lost and Thalia joins the Hunters, because the Chase house will never, ever be home, not really.

Annabeth is fifteen when she almost dies.

She’s fifteen, and sure, she’s nearly died plenty of times in the past eight years, but this time it was worse. It was worst because it was figurative, this time, because her heart was ripped from her chest because  _ Percy _ . She was  _ dead _ Annabeth was sure of it - Grove wasn’t getting anything from her, no one heard of her, she was blown out of a  _ fucking volcano _ . Getting up everyday after that feels like walking on broken glass, every movement painfully stabbing into her heart and her skin and her lungs. And then all of a sudden, she was back and it felt like all the air returned to her lungs. And even as the teeth of jealousy bite at her over  _ Calypso _ and  _ Rachel _ , she manages to hold her head up high and pretend like the memory of Percy’s lips on hers for just a second of time doesn’t drift to the forefront of her mind every time Percy’s eyes linger just too long Rachel’s back. She’s fifteen, and for once she’s starting to really be a hero.

Annabeth is sixteen when she is done.

She’s sixteen and she’s tired of fighting, tired of almost losing her life and coming away from battle with more blood than skin covering her body. Because just when she thought it was done, just when she finally had Percy, when she’d had to watch Lucy kill herself, just when she could breathe, it happened all over again and she cursed the day that she’d ever wanted to prove she was a hero. She was tired of always being the hero, of having to do her mother’s dirty work. Every few minutes, another face she’ll never see again crosses her mind, Lea or Charlie and Silena or Lucy or Bianca, all of them forming into a ball of memories that aches as if it’s a bruise and she’s poking it incessantly. She’s sixteen and she’s tired and she just wants to collapse into a ball and cry.

She’s nineteen when it seems to really be getting better.

She’s nineteen, and maybe it’s just wishful thinking, but now she has classes at New Rome, and her cousin is okay, and the world isn’t ending for the fifth time in less than ten years, and she can  _ breathe. _ (Screams still echo through Cabin Three in the middle of the night at the memory of Arachne, of Tartarus, and the only Percy’s comforting whispers makes it go away enough to go back to sleep, and she’s still catching snippets of sleep in between nightmares, but that’s to be expected.) The weight of the world is finally, finally off of her shoulders, and even though she sometimes holds her breath when one of her friends is missing from a gathering until they appear, she’s still able to exude some semblance of  _ okay _ , and really, that’s all she could ever ask for. She’s nineteen and she is at home surrounded by friends, with Thalia’s laugh coming from one side and Grove’s panpipes a few feet away, and Percy’s arms wrapped tightly around her. She’s nineteen and she finally feels like a real person.


	7. Willa Solace

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> wow it's been a while.... whoops? 
> 
> trigger warnings for death, medical problems, references to sexual abuse, and i think that's it but let me know if I missed anything.

Willa is five when she loses faith.

She is five, and she no longer believes her mama when she’s told that her dad will come back. She is too used to hearing the words time and time again, that he’s there, that he loves them, that she’s special. She knows she isn’t special, just like she knows that when her mother does “what it takes” and whisks weird men into the hotel room next to theirs it’s actually illegal and she should turn up their television as loud as she can to block out any noise. She sits at the bars while her mom sings every Tuesday and Friday night, working on homework and coloring and playing with dolls and reading under the watchful eye of the bartender. She’s only five and she’s already lost all hope of a regular life.

Willa is seven when she becomes a villain.

She’s seven when there’s this big fight with a client, and all she can remember is hearing screaming in the next room and the sound of something breaking before she runs in to find the mirror broken and a man with his pants around his ankles in a pool of blood and her momma covering her mouth in shock. Willa falls to the man’s side and feels for a pulse - it’s weak but there - and orders her mom to get ice and a bandaid and some thread for stitches, and with tiny shaking hands she stitches up his head wound while Momma blubbers and explains the fight to a little girl who’s too young to really understand. She waits until she’s done to speak, frowning at the messy stitches holding his head closed and tells Momma that if they hadn’t patched it up, they could have killed him and run away. She’s seven, and as they leave the room her small eyes watch the life drain out of the man’s and knows she purposely didn’t do enough to stop it.

Willa is nine when things implode.

She’s nine when her granny shows up at the door of their hotel room and threatens to take her away. She resists, kicking and screaming and fucking rolls out of the woman’s arms when she’s picked up, so they go out for dinner instead. In the booth at Cracker Barrel, while she’s playing the peg game, the adults talk and the next thing she knows they’re living at Granny’s ranch and things are… good. So good, she expects something to go wrong but nothing does. Now she has a puppy and a horse and chores and Momma’s not doing illegal things anymore, and if the creepy old ranch hand who makes passes at Momma shows up dead in the vegetable garden of an organ failure, no one suspects Willa. She’s only nine, but life is good.

Willa is ten when things get real good.

She’s ten when she’s dropped off at Camp Half-Blood, and it’s perhaps the best thing that could have happened to her. Sure, she can’t keep her eye out and protect Momma anymore, but she can work in the infirmary with the other Apollo kids - her dad’s a god, and that makes so much sense - and she loves it. Her sister, Lee, teaches her the campfire songs, and Mikey Yew teaches her to shoot arrows, and it’s the best summer of Willa’s life. She’s ten and she’s so reluctant to go home until she hears about Momma’s new boyfriend and suddenly she doesn’t miss camp so much.

Willa is eleven when camp is flipped upside down.

She’s eleven, and it’s her second year when there’s a weird new kid who turns out to be the child of the Great Prophecy or whatever. Honestly, she doesn’t care, too busy searching her mother’s letters for clues that her latest boyfriend needs some healthcare, and playing with her new sister Kayla. But then Lucy Castellan turns out to be a traitor and it feels like her head’s spinning, because Lucy welcomed her to camp. Everyone loved Lucy. She loved Lucy. She tends to the bleeding, poisoned scorpion bite on Percy’s back and doesn’t even flinch, because there’s more important things to worry about. She’s eleven, and now a soldier in the war.

Willa is twelve and she is seeing red.

She’s twelve and someone hurt her mother and someone stole Granny’s money and that person needs to pay for hurting her family. She cleans up the blood around her mother’s wrists from handcuffs and the bruises swelling her eyes shut and the blood matting her hair, and wraps up her ankle which is sprained from running and mops up the blood on her thighs, and kisses her on the forehead before she leaves. This is the first time there’s actual murder on the brain and she unleashes a heart attack from her fingers that’s so powerful he’s dead before he realizes what happens. That’s when Willa runs. She packs up her things and just goes because that was outright  _ murder _ and she can never face Momma or Granny or her cousins ever again. She’s twelve when she goes to camp with no plans of returning.

Willa is thirteen, and she’s in love.

She’s thirteen, and there’s a new girl with long black hair and a sad smile and weird way of speaking and Willa is pretty sure she’s in love. They become quiet friends in the way that two kids with no one else do, and it’s small and tentative, but it’s something. With a start, Willa realizes this means she’s probably gay, but she doesn’t care to put a name to it, because she thinks boys are pretty cute too, but none of them are Nicoletta. The night Nicoletta leaves, Willa wants to tell her about the times she lost patients, the way that anyone can screw up just a little and things can go wrong, but she’s gone before she gets a chance and Willa is left alone again. She’s thirteen and she thinks that might have broken her heart.

Willa is fifteen when she shoulders responsibility.

She’s fifteen and Mikey and Lee are both dead so she’s in charge now. She takes the little ones under her wing immediately, checks that they’re safe and breathing and that they’re okay, and then cries alone in her bed. That’s when her smiles start getting wider and the light fills her blue eyes more and more and her golden curls look like they’re woven from the sun because someone, someone has to be the light in that fucking cabin so it might as well be her. She gets letters from time to time from her mother, but she never answers - they’re safer without her there, because she’s a monster there but with her own kind here. Everyone here has killed people, and that makes her feel okay. She’s fifteen, and the war is over for now, and that’s great.

Willa is sixteen when it all ends - for good.

She’s sixteen and the war with Gaea has been fought and she’s fucking brought a life into the world and she’s got Nicoletta back and she’s so happy she could sing. She works harder in the infirmary now, Nicoletta at her side, and if she wakes up screaming no one says a word. Sometimes it gets to be too much and she has to hide out until she can stop hearing screams, stop seeing the life leave that last horrible man’s eyes. She’s not so different from her best friend, not really, because they both cause death, and that’s okay. There’s enough light in her for the both of them, so she keeps on shining and trying not to scream in frustration every time it’s too much. She’s only sixteen, but she’s been a killer for most of her life.

Willa is seventeen when she goes home.

She’s seventeen when she drags Nicoletta onto the back of her motorcycle and they drive whooping and laughing all the way to Texas. Everyone loves Nicoletta and loves how big and tall Willa has gotten, admiring her strong shoulders and calloused hands, the way her golden tan looks against Nicoletta’s pale skin. Her momma cries when she sees her and her Granny pinches Nicoletta’s cheeks and the cousins and ranch hands tease her and it’s so warm but she can’t help but feel a little sick. Momma finds her in the barn and tells her that she knows what happened, that it’s okay, that she’s not a monster and suddenly Willa realizes those are the words she didn’t even know she needed to hear. She’s seventeen and she’s really, truly happy for the first time in forever.

**Author's Note:**

> Comments and kudos are my life blood just for the record,,,


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